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Some Aspects of the Prehistory of Northern Italy from the Final Palaeolithic to the Middle Neolithic: a Reconsideration on the Evidence Available to Date
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2014
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This article concerns the prehistory of Northern Italy from the end of the ninth to the beginning of the fourth millennium bc. The main aim in this work is to interpret the available archaeological evidence in an attempt to understand the cultural change which occurred through the period under study.
The gap existing in our knowledge between the Late Epigravettian and the Early Mesolithic has been partially rilled by recent discoveries of Final Epigravettian encampments on the Baldo (Bagolini and Nisi 1976) and Bondone (Bagolini 1976) mountains in the Veneto. and Trentino regions. Unfortunately nothing is known about the natural history of the area, because the Baldo and Bondone sites did not yield any faunal remains. Only a few charcoal samples were recovered from the peat bog of Viotte on Bondone, where Final Epigravettian hunters settled. These charcoal samples have not yet been identified. In my opinion, the Bondone encampment might be attributed to the Alleröd oscillation. Palynological evidence of this period is almost totally lacking except for the area south of Lake Garda. At the Castellaro Lagusello peat bog, Bertoldi (1965) identified both the Bölling and Alleröd oscillations from the same core at the depths of 6·50 and 6·0 m respectively. The presence of oak pollen at the depth of 6·50 m varies from 0·2 to 0·6%. This pollen disappears after this moment to reappear at the depth of 6·0 m when birch pollen increases and pine decreases abruptly. The Bölling oscillation has been dated by the radio-carbon method to 11250±250 bc, while no date is available for the Alleröd one.
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- Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1980
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